Mozilla Firefox hits back, says Twitter singled out its web browser

And the Twitter vs Firefox battle continues! Firefox has responded to Twitter's claims that its web browser stores users' cached data for a time period of seven days.

Firefox's chief technology officer Eric Rescorla in a blog said that Twitter had singled out Firefox in its report wherein the micro-blogging site claimed that Firefox stored data of users for a week. "...why is this just Firefox?," he wrote in the blog post adding, "There is a standard way to ensure that data isn't cached, but until recently Twitter didn't use it, so they were just dependent on non-standard behavior on some browsers."

He also said that all web browsers "store local copies of data they get from servers so that they can avoid downloading the same data over the internet repeatedly." While this is not a problem for people who are using their personal computers, it can be one if users share a computer with other people as other people might be able to see that cached data even if users have logged out of Twitter. "If you do nothing, the data will be automatically deleted after 7 days the next time you run Firefox," he added.

It is worth noting that the controversy started when Twitter in a blog post talked about Firefox's browser cache retention time adding that the same issue did not impact people using other browsers like Safari or Chrome.

"If you use, or have used, a public or shared computer to access Twitter, we encourage you to clear the browser cache before logging out, and to be cautious about the personal information you download on a computer that other people use," Twitter added in its post.

Separately, Rescorla also listed the steps that users could follow to remove their browsing history from Firefox automatically. Here are the steps:

Step 1: Click the menu button and select Options.

Step 2: Select Privacy and Security panel and go to the History section.

Step 3: In the drop-down menu next to Firefox will, choose Use custom settings for history.

Step 4: Check the box for Clear history when Firefox closes.

Step 5: To specify what types of history should be cleared, click the Settings… button next to Clear history when Firefox closes.

Step 6: In the Settings for Clearing History window, check the items that you want to have cleared automatically each time you quit Firefox.

Step 7: After selecting the history to be cleared, click OK to close the Settings for Clearing History window.

Step 8: Close the about:preferences page. Any changes you've made will automatically be saved.